After Midnight

by Irmgard Keun

  “The landlady’s a Baroness. Baroness von Freysen. Fine woman. Sight of her’s enough to freeze the blood in the veins of the strongest man alive. I have to get very, very drunk before I dare go home and face her. I slept with her once by mistake, that’s many years ago, she’s never forgotten it, though. Means I can live at her place on credit. That woman has a grateful disposition. Apart from the picture of the Führer, there’s a tolerably conservative-cum-revolutionary atmosphere about the place, you get left in peace. Mind you, I could still have credit at a grand place like the Frankfurter Hof hotel, on account of the old days, but if I went to live there it might make people envious, Manderscheid here or someone else would denounce me for running down the government. We are living in the time of the greatest German denunciation movement ever, you see. Everyone has to keep an eye on everyone else. Everyone’s got power over everyone else. Everyone can get everyone else locked up. There aren’t many can withstand the temptation to make use of that kind of power. The noblest instincts of the German nation have been aroused, and they’re being tenderly cultivated.

  “All right, don’t get agitated, Manderscheid, I didn’t mean to insult you. You’ll make up tomorrow for what you’ve left undone today. You’ve got a family. A family man gets timid, can’t afford to be a man of principle too, not these days. There are a good few see their families as just the moral excuse they want for apathy and crawling. You gave me twenty marks a little while back, Manderscheid, so I can buy you another glass of beer. Drink up!”

  The café’s getting emptier now, but it is no quieter. The fat, cheerful proprietor with his beer belly is standing beside us. “Evening, ladies and gentlemen, see you soon, good night, Heil Hitler,” he says to his customers as they go out, adding, to Heini, “Well, never know who you may be speaking to, do you, or what they happen to like?”

  “The Stürmer, new edition just out, the Stinging Nettle and the Illustrated Observer for sale.”

  Oh lord, I was hoping we could go home at last, and here comes the man who sells the Stürmer, the character Heini likes to engage in conversation, asking him ideological questions about World Outlook. The Stürmer man is about forty, fair and pale and tired, and bursting with zeal. He beavers away investigating all sort of Jewish secrets; he’s always discovering something new.

  Breslauer doesn’t like it when Heini calls the Stürmer man over, he is sliding back and forth on his seat in his uneasiness, and his eyes flicker. “Calm down, Breslauer,” says Heini, “don’t you worry, the man has wonderfully well-developed instincts, his blood speaks loud and clear. Anyone can see you’re Jewish—anyone except our friend from the Stürmer.”

  Blue clouds of smoke fill the air, almost enough to smother you. The proprietor is switching off lights at the back of the café, the waiters are beginning to empty ashtrays and bang them down again on the tables in a busy, unwelcoming way. Toni tenderly wraps his guitar in black oilcloth and finishes the end of his drink.

  The Stürmer man has found out something new about Jews and Freemasons, to the effect that our five and ten pfennig coins have a sinister connection with Judaism and thus with Freemasonry. The fact is that the stalks of the ears of corn on the backs of those coins form a kind of Star of David. I can never understand the Stürmer man’s explanations. He says he can now divulge that he is on the track of a shocking conspiracy. “Amazing,” says Heini, “I’d never have thought of a thing like that. What an intelligent person you are, what a very intelligent person!”

  The Stürmer man is delighted. He looks at Heini and our whole party with as much love and gratitude as if he were ready to risk his life rescuing every one of us from a burning house. “Oh, I’m only a very simple, uneducated man, ladies and gentlemen, but I’ve educated myself out of the Stürmer, you see. But for the Stürmer I’d never have known about the terrible dangers threatening our magnificent Aryan destiny. I’d have been blind to the whole Jewish question. I will say this, though, it’s in my nature to have a deeply inquiring mind. I get it from my stars. I hope you won’t think me immodest when I tell you I was born under Leo.” And the Stürmer man falls silent.

  “Good heavens!” says Heini. “Why, then you share a birth month with this gentleman.” And he indicates Breslauer.

  “I knew it,” says the Stürmer man. “I felt it at once—I sensed it! Give me your hand, sir.” Breslauer shakes hands, looking embarrassed. The Stürmer man is all emotional. “I can tell, just from the look of you, that you have a deeply inquiring mind too,” he says. “You will understand me. When two Leos meet, anywhere in the world, they’re like brothers. I’ll tell you something, as another Leo—something I haven’t told a living soul before. Do you mind if I sit down for a minute, ladies and gentlemen?”

  The Stürmer man sits down beside Breslauer and offers to buy him a beer—“No, really, I insist!”

  So Breslauer and the Stürmer man raise their glasses and drink to those born under the sign of the Lion.

  Manderscheid says good night and leaves without anyone’s noticing.

  The proprietor puts out more lights.

  Algin is resting his pale, tired face in his hands, cradling it. His dark eyes are fixed with thinking, looking inward.

  Lovingly, carefully, the Stürmer man takes a long, narrow packet wrapped in white tissue paper out of his heavy briefcase. Lovingly, carefully, he removes several small, red rubber bands. He solemnly undoes the tissue paper. I can’t wait to see what’s inside.

  The Stürmer man is holding a bare little twig, which might be off a jasmine or lilac bush, holding it cautiously and tenderly as a mother would hold her sleeping baby. And he hands the twig to Breslauer with tender, solemn caution, as you might lay the most precious thing in your life in your best friend’s safe hands. “Thank you,” breathes Breslauer, holding the twig reverently, not sure what to do with it.

  “The fact is,” says the Stürmer man, after quite a long silence, “the fact is, I invented it! Only you, another Leo, can really understand. There are such people as diviners. You know about diviners? They go around with a forked stick looking for water underground. Hidden springs. Diviners are the elect, appointed by the stars. The rod in their hands strikes the ground if there is a spring hidden deep below. And then we dig for that pure, Aryan spring, and the well may bring in a good deal of money. Well, now—I have invented this diviner’s rod for recognizing Jews. You see, one can’t always tell who Jews are, straight off. The Stürmer writes that they’re children of the Devil. Now the Devil may take on all sorts of shapes. But I can find him out with my rod! There are some Jews who don’t look as if they are Jews—and there are some Christians who don’t look as if they are Christians. I can find them all out with my rod. I take it in my hand and ride in a tram with it, or walk down the street. I touch people’s backs with my rod, and if it jerks, that person is a Jew.” Sure enough, the twig is beginning to twitch in Breslauer’s hand. “You’re my friend,” the Stürmer man tells him. “You’re another Leo, you alone can understand me. I haven’t told another soul about my invention yet, I’ve got to try it out a bit more first. I unmasked a tram conductor with my twig last week. The twig struck his back when he was punching a ticket for the woman sitting next to me—I’d liked that woman on sight.”

  “But what happens,” I can’t help asking, “what happens if somebody born under Leo is a Jew?”

  “You’re still young,” says the Stürmer man, and he gazes gravely at me for quite a while. “You can’t really understand these things as yet. Signs of the Zodiac do not apply to Jews.”

  And now I feel like crying, because I really do not understand, and I don’t think I will when I’m older either. It was only when I loved Franz I understood the world, and felt happy. When you love, you’re praying. Everything was quite clear. I wanted to be good. I think you begin doing things the right way when you want to be good. And I think I’m doing everything wrong now because all I want is for people to be good to me. I want to be loved, everybody wants to be lo
ved; for a thousand people who want to be loved there may perhaps be just one who wants to love. Our Father which art in heaven … my heart is all a lump of grief.

  “Closing time,” calls the proprietor, barking it out. He is Bavarian, and likes a bit of a fight when he’s been drinking, but there’s no one here for him to fight with.

  Algin raises his poor face from the cradle of his hands. His hands let go of his head. For a moment, his head sways wearily, helpless and desperate, as if two faithful friends who stood by him had left him in the lurch.

  Breslauer rises to his feet. He doesn’t want to let the Stürmer man pay; the Stürmer man doesn’t want to let him pay.

  The waiter gets the bill wrong, right, wrong again. He wants to go home. He looks pale, crumpled, wasted. Even a good tip won’t cheer him up tonight. He is so tired that he wants sleep more than money.

  We are outside the café, in the street, disconsolate as unredeemed pawnbroker’s pledges. We none of us know what to do with ourselves, we none of us know what to do with the others. A sticky sort of weariness keeps us together; we can only tear ourselves apart by force. We are all rather drunk, and have become set in our longings.

  Except for Heini, who is still angry and wakeful.

  There is a cool, rotting smell in the air, as of graves broken open. It is spring. All that is dead begins to live again. What for? Just to die once more? Pale, blue brightness is descending.

  “Off you go now,” Heini tells the man who sells the Stürmer. But he cannot tear himself away from Breslauer, he is shaking Breslauer’s hand with the fervent enthusiasm of a child shaking ripe cherries off a tree.

  “I wish you hadn’t made fun of him,” says Breslauer, watching the Stürmer man stride away, heavily laden, and turn into a dark side street.

  “I knew it, Breslauer,” says Heini, “I knew there was no helping you. You think anything human is touching. The Stürmer man is touching, you’re touching, I’m touching, the old madam at my boarding house where I’m going back now is touching, Algin Moder the future Nazi poet is touching. A pity all these touching characters want to do away with each other.”

  “And I will do away with myself,” cries Algin, marching off, taking long and desperate strides.

  “Algin, wait for me!” But he doesn’t hear me.

  “Come on,” says Heini, “come on, Breslauer. You’re stupid, you know that? Just don’t persuade yourself stupidity is a good thing.”

  They’ve forgotten me. I was standing in a dark corner, listening to it all. They couldn’t have known I was still there. All the same, they forgot me. They’re all gone now, and I go home alone. It isn’t far. It’s my own fault.

  7

  IT’S A LOVELY DAY, WHEN YOU COME MY WAY, Marie-Luise …

  Dieter Aaron is winding up the gramophone. Gerti is standing beside him. Her dress is made of cornflower-blue velvet, her back is white and bare, there are blue streamers in her hair, she’s a pretty, charming sight.

  Coloured paper streamers hang from all the lights, wind their way over table-tops and chair-backs. Liska’s party, Liska’s carnival. Although Carnival time is over, Easter is coming and it’s Lent now.

  Everyone is on the move, their words and footsteps and laughter all lively and cheerful. Yet there’s a scent in the air of a sad Ash Wednesday morning. Though morning is a long way off, it isn’t even near midnight yet. It’s only nine in the evening, and the nearby church clock is just beginning to chime.

  It’s a lovely day, when you come my way.… Gerti herself is looking lovely. The dark Englishman’s eyes are practically burning holes in her bare back, as she notices without actually looking. Every woman notices when she’s being admired. Personally, I only mind about that if the man I’m in love with notices too. Men are so stupid, unfortunately, that you always have to point that sort of thing out to them. Gerti points it out to Dieter now. He puts his hand on her shoulder. Gerti is glad he will do something so dangerous. Because it is dangerous. I hope nobody has seen them except the Englishman.

  “A lot of nice people here,” says the Englishman. “All so happy, too.” He is drinking enormous quantities of Mosel, although Liska got extra whisky in for him specially this afternoon. The Englishmen arrived this morning, when I was in the very thick of preparations. Three of them, two young men and one old one. The two young men are slim and dark, the old man has a clean, pink bald head, with little tufts of white hair around it. They’re all English journalists. They met Algin a few years ago and have now come to see him and talk to him. They are on a study tour of Germany, studying the change in the German nation. They seem to like it a lot.

  Algin wasn’t in. He had probably gone to the library to do research for his new historical novel. So Liska invited the Englishmen to come this evening, and here they are. But Algin isn’t back yet. He’s been gone since this morning. He is out all day quite often, eats out and writes while he’s out. But he knows today is the day of the party.

  I don’t feel too happy when I think of Algin. I feel worried. Why did Heini have to go saying that about doing away with himself last night? It’s not the sort of thing you ought to say. It’s not … Perhaps Algin has gone right out of his mind. Betty Raff is worrying about Algin too. She is in the kitchen making a herbal infusion to soothe her nerves. Her girlish evening dress is made of bright green taffeta, with a hammered metal brooch about the size and style of a breastplate at her bosom, the sort of thing ladies of the olden time wear in Wagnerian opera.

  “Have you got any idea where he might be?” Betty Raff asks me. Her voice is shaking; her hands sprinkle a variety of health-giving herbs into a teapot. The water on the stove begins to bubble. Betty is vegetarian and high-minded because she wants to be free of physical things, all pure and spiritual, but I have never seen anyone so constantly concerned with the body as vegetarian Betty Raff. I know drunks and gluttons with far more time available for things of the spirit than Betty. “I believe an apple would do me good now,” she’ll say, and she piously grates an apple into a sort of mush and then eats it. Or she will make an elaborate herb soup to heighten her vital consciousness. If she eats three plums, she has to chew a quarter of a lemon slowly afterwards. She goes on a special springtime diet in spring, requiring five radishes every evening. Sometimes she has to eat her vegetables raw and sometimes cooked. On Sundays she eats wheatflakes and some kind of sawdust with milk or fruit juice stirred into it. Well, you can’t actually say she eats, because eating is what ordinary people do. Betty Raff partakes of her food. Sometimes she suspects that she is partaking of something contaminated by the smell of roasting meat, which would poison her bloodstream. Then she has to drink pure grapejuice and take spoonfuls of vegetable juices. She makes herself something different every hour of the day, and eats it in a grave, sad, reproachful sort of way, as if she were making a great and moving sacrifice on behalf of the crude, unheeding world around her.

  Personally, I do not think Betty Raff is at all high-minded, though by now even Algin believes in her goodness and purity. Well, why not, when she admires him so much? She may be only pretending, but he believes her all right, because he feels abandoned by himself and the whole world. Where is Algin? “We must look for him,” says Betty Raff, “we must go and find him,” and she sinks into the shabby kitchen chair beside the stove. The whole kitchen is full of the wild disorder of a party. You only see a kitchen in such an untidy state when a party’s on in an apartment, and this one is now a sea of glasses and dirty dishes. Teacloths lie around in pale and grubby little heaps. Thin rings of sausage skin lie on the kitchen table among cheese rinds and empty or half-empty tin cans. The rubbish bucket is almost bursting, overflowing with crumpled brown, blue and white paper. There are wine bottles in a corner, empty ones and full ones, a dark army of wine bottles. I wouldn’t be surprised if they suddenly started to march. One poor, homely brown roll is lying in front of those dark, gleaming, erect bottles. I’ll pick it up.

  Good heavens, Betty Raff is crying. I�
�ve never seen her cry before. Now what do I do? When you’ve never seen a person cry before you can’t imagine that they ever could cry. I feel awful, seeing this naked weeping; what do I do?

  The ceiling light is flickering, weakly. Flickering down on the cup of greenish-brown herbal tea held in Betty Raff s trembling hand. She had better drink it. That great shield of a brooch at Betty’s thin neck is wobbling with her desperately heaving breath. Up and down. There’s a spot of grease spreading on the bright green taffeta dress, lying dark and round on Betty’s lap, and she can’t stand grease that comes from animal fat.

  “Here, Betty, I’ll get the spot out with warm water. Don’t cry, dear, you’ll spill your tea. Give me the cup—I’ll put it on the stove.” This is the first time I’ve ever called Betty “dear,” but you’ve got to say something to a person who is crying.

  I must spread a few more rolls, put champagne bottles on ice, wash some coffee cups, go and talk to Fraulein Baerwald and old Frau Aaron so that they won’t notice Dieter and Gerti. Gerti has made a date to meet Kurt Pielmann in the Henninger Bar at ten; he mustn’t know she’s at a party with lots of Jews and people of mixed race. Of course, Gerti doesn’t want to go and meet Kurt Pielmann, she wants to stay with Dieter, so I’m to ring Pielmann at the Henninger Bar just after ten and tell him Gerti’s lying down in my room, not at all well, she can’t possibly come out and meet him tonight because she’d be throwing up the whole time, yesterday evening really upset her stomach, with the alcohol and all.